We took the car this afternoon to a Vicom Centre for one of those statutory checks ahead of renewing the road tax and getting it insured for another year. Happily it passed the test in a suitably straightforward manner and we were soon off to the Aiman Café some way down the road to enjoy some of our favourite comestibles. (They do a little sardine puff which really does the business, and then some.) Sitting there, basking in the late-afternoon sun, with a potential problem having proved supremely unproblematic, it struck me that I felt as far from melancholy as a man can reasonably get.
But I was also half-aware that it was only this morning I came across this plangent reminder in Robert Burton's magnum opus on those prone to melancholy: Now go and brag of thy present happiness, whosoever thou art, brag of thy temperature, of thy good parts, insult, triumph, and boast; thou seest in what a brittle state thou art, how soon thou mayest be dejected, how many several ways, by bad diet, bad air, a small loss, a little sorrow or discontent, an ague, etc.; how many sudden accidents may procure thy ruin, what a small tenure of happiness thou hast in this life, how weak and silly a creature thou art. Now RB may be a miserable soul, but he's right, of course.
But in a way an awareness of our weakness and silliness adds to the piquant delight of those moments when everything seems so well, no?
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